ROSWELL, Ga.— Two families were homeless on Thanksgiving Day, nevertheless they had a lot to be thankful for. A Roswell family received an emergency wakeup call around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 21, when a fire swept through their Seven Pines Apartments home near Holcomb Bridge Road.

Everyone made it out of the building safely, but the upstairs unit which caught fire and the downstairs unit which suffered a lot of water damage were left uninhabitable.

According to Roswell Fire Department Fire Marshal Paul Piccirilli, the fire began because of a candle.

“The resident was using candles to illuminate her home,” Piccirilli said. “One of those candles was in a closet in the bathroom and caught some material on fire.”

Thankfully, the woman living there discovered the fire had begun and was able to quickly call 911, he said. Emergency crews arrived within minutes and managed to extinguish the fire before it spread to other apartments.

“They did a great job,” Piccirilli said. “The contained it to the apartment and put it out quickly.”

Tom Kohl, a neighbor downstairs, said the woman pounded on his door and the others in building to warn them of the danger before fire engines arrived.

“The fire department got here very quickly. We were thankful for that,” Kohl said. “But the lady upstairs made sure we were all awake. We got the dog out. Everybody got out.”

The fire damage was restricted mostly to the closet and bathroom, Picccirilli said, and the apartment itself suffered water damage from the hoses. Piccirilli said the damage was less than it could have been if the resident had not seen the fire start.

“If she had gone to bed it could have been a much diff outcome,” he said.

The resident told officials on the scene she was using candles to light the home because she did not have power. Piccirilli said seven people in all were displaced from the apartment building. The Red Cross is helping them.